


Waking To You

by rivendellrose



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 20:51:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just after the destruction of New Caprica, Leoben wakes in the resurrection pool and needs a little comfort. Natalie is there for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking To You

Leoben lost consciousness in a puddle of blood at the bottom of the stairs, and woke again, seemingly as fast as blinking, in the body-temperature, viscous embrace of the resurrection pool. He gasped, and coughed as the stuff seeped into his throat. 

A smooth, long-fingered hand helped to raise his head out of the fluid, and for a stupid moment he thought it was Kara. Impossible, of course - from the darkness and the warm red light, he knew even through the goop that clouded his eyes that he was on the resurrection ship. The general impression of pale blonde hair and warm skin close to him here meant one of his sister Sixes, not Kara. Besides, Kara had just stabbed him, and she generally didn’t go in for holding his head up out of liquid after she’d done that.

She had held him, though. Embraced him, told him she loved him. He raised his fingers to his mouth but didn’t quite touch - these weren’t the lips she’d kissed, but he wanted to hold onto the physical memory as long as he could.

“She killed you again,” the Six - Natalie, he was sure it was her - told him. Her dark eyes overflowed with disapproval and frustration. 

“Yes,” he admitted. “But she embraced me. She took me in her arms, and told me that she loved me.”

Natalie frowned. “She distracted you. So that she could kill you again.”

Leoben shrugged. “Bodies are reborn.”

“She’s killed you how many times since you took her in? Four? Five?”

“Six times.” He rubbed his stomach where the knife had entered. There was nothing, not even a scar, but his mind still remembered the pain mingled with the pleasure of her kiss.

“You could have stopped going back.” 

Natalie sounded annoyed. Leoben tilted his head to look at her - her pretty face was screwed up in a mixture of frustration, worry, and disgust. He touched it gently. “I couldn’t. I can’t give up on her. God doesn’t want us to give up on love, Natalie. Love is supposed to be selfless, eternal, undemanding...”

“That’s God’s love.” The frown lines remained between Natalie’s dark eyes, and she eyed him with a look almost of suspicion. 

“Shouldn’t we all aspire to love as God does? To love each other with no restraint and no demand for recompense?”

Natalie did not look convinced, but she handed him a towel and helped him to climb out of the pool, then stood by while he dried himself. When at last he was wrapped up in one of the robes that awaited the newly resurrected there, she was still eyeing him with a cautious, worried expression.

“Stop worrying, sister.” Leoben cupped her face lightly between his hands, still a little damp with the sweet-smelling fluid of the resurrection. “What’s done is done, and I have what I wanted. What I saw happened. She loves me.”

“Words--”

“Are the beginning of everything,” he interrupted firmly. 

“And if she didn’t mean them?” Natalie demanded. “If she lied? Humans do that. They lie all the time.”

He laughed. “So do we. We are their children as well as God’s, after all. But it doesn’t matter, even if she did. I looked into her eyes, she held me in her arms and kissed me, and in that moment I believed her. I felt... complete. It was a perfect moment. Now we can move on. Whatever God has in store for her and I...” He dropped his hands to rest on his sister’s shoulders. “I don’t know what that is, yet. But I can go to it with a heart open to the future, now. And nothing after can take away that memory.”

Natalie shook her head, but he could already see she’d given up making sense of him. “What will you do now?”

“Rest, for a while. Sleep, dream, trail my fingers in the stream and see what other visions it brings to me. There’s so much else that I want to understand.”

“Do you want to be alone, then?” she asked, tilting her head.

He smiled, and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close to him. “No. Not if you’re willing to be with me. I’ve been alone a lot the last year. Sometimes even when I was with her, she... preferred to stay apart. If you’d like to stay...?”

Natalie draped her arm around his waist in return. They fit together nicely, even though she was too tall for her shoulder to rest under his like Kara’s had. With Natalie - with any of his sisters - there was none of the terrible frisson, the caution or necessary concern that he’d felt over and over with Kara. Here was peace, quiet, family. Leoben kissed her cheek as he’d often kissed Kacey’s. It was different - she smelled different, her hair wasn’t as soft, her skin was sturdy and grown instead of butterfly-fragile. But it was still a good thing, he thought as they stepped out into the rest of the ship.


End file.
